Utah Entrepreneur

Hard Reset Zune 1st Gen.

2009-11-10T10:45:03-08:00

I’ve needed to know this a few times, and once I figure it out after a while of researching on the internet, I just do it and forget about it. Here’s to never having to search for how to hard reset your zune 1st Gen again.

Instructions:

Step 1 – Reset the Device

Do all of this at the same time:

Hold the center button.
Hold the right button.
Hold the back button.

This will force the device to reset. Now you need to act quickly and move on to step 2!

Step 2 – Hard Reset the Device

Do all of this at the same time:

Hold the center button.
Hold the left button.
Hold the back button.

Now just follow the instructions on the screen of your device.

Free Zune HD Contest WINNERS:

2009-10-31T17:28:59-07:00

Good Halloween ladies and gentlemen!

First of all, thanks to everyone for entering my awesome “Elite Eternity 239th post celebration contest!“ The results are finally in, and I think there will be some happy people tonight. Well, at least one for sure! Just for everyone’s information, this is the tool I used to randomly generate the winners of this contest. Pretty cool.

Congrats to the winners!

FREE 32GB ZUNE HD WINNER:

- Parky (Commenter)

FREE 4 Hour Work Week Book Winners:

- FlyLeafFan (Twitter)
- ZuneMaster (Twitter)
- Jennifer (Commenter)

The winners have 24 hours to email me with their name and shipping address.

If you didn’t win, don’t fret. I still love you. I’m sure I’ll be doing some other cool contests in the future, so you’ll have plenty more chances to win.

Confessions to PETA Part 1: I Shot A Deer.

2009-10-28T16:15:46-07:00

. . . and I liked it.

So I’ve been hunting twice before in my life. We never got anything, so this time I was bound and determined to get a buck. Need to eat me some of that deer jerky!

So this time we I finally got one. We were driving down from the top of a mountain when a bunch of deer went running across the road. There were probably 4 doe, and then the driver spotted it! It was a buck! We all hopped out of the vehicle with our rifles, ran up the hill away from the road (you can’t shoot your deer right from the road; it’s illegal). There were three people with guns. My padre, my bro-in-law, and myself. It just so happened that the buck was right in front of me (probably a thousand yards or so ) standing super still in a bunch of quakies. My heart was thumping like crazy.

We hadn’t ever seen a buck during hunting season, and this time I had one right in front of me! I raised my rifle, looked at the buck through my scope, aimed right above it’s front legs, squeezed the trigger, and . . . I didn’t know what happened. My Dad asked if I got it, and I said I didn’t know. He looked super disappointed, and if my heart were beating at a normal speed, I might have felt disappointment too. I felt pretty good about the shot, but I never saw the buck fall or run, so I couldn’t verify the kill. I dropped to my knee and started looking through the scope again. There were like two doe that were staring right at me – still! I double-checked that they both didn’t have antlers, waited for them to run, then we started walking up the hill. Just when I thought I had let the buck get away, my friend started pointing and yelling that I had got it! No kidding!?

About ten feet in front of me lay the injured animal. I won’t lie, it was pretty rough. I felt sort of bad, but I’ll spare you the details. A couple shots and a few minutes of excitement later, my deer was dead. I’ll spare the gutting part too. Not very cool, but hey, somebody’s gotta do it – somebody like my Dad. lol. Thank goodness that my bro-in-law and his brother had been watching YouTube videos on the proper way to gut a deer, cause I would have been screwed if I had to do it alone. My Dad did the dirty work while my bro-in-law, his brother (my Mallard business partner), and I assisted.

It was dark by the time we finished and we took the fresh kill to the meat processing place. Gross. I wasn’t prepared for that crap. Yeah, I’m a pretty big wuss if you haven’t figured out by now. Usually businesses are fairly clean, orderly, and normal, right? Well, that’s not how meat processing places are. There is blood all over everything (including the floor you walk on), and people lugging in their dead animals. Pretty gruesome. I’ve never seen any of the SAW (or whatever they are) movies, but I felt like I was in a torture chamber. Not very cool, but hey, somebody’s gotta do it, right?

We went back a few days later, and for a little over $100 bucks bones dollars my dead animal had been turned into neat white packages of meat. Pretty spiffy.

Fast forward a couple weeks later (to today): I just pulled out three of those white packages, sliced them up, and mixed them with a jerky marinade. Tomorrow I’ll put the marinaded jerky slices in the jerky dehydrator that I purchased from Amazon!

Funny story:

So the night we get to our hunting destination in Southern Utah, we head up into the mountains to find the perfect meadow. A perfect meadow would mean a patch of grass out in the middle of some secluded area, with a watering hole, and fertile soil for the bucks to fairy-prance around in. At least that was our vision. The perfect meadow should also have a perfect sniping perch in the mountainside right next to it, right? Well, that’s what we found – at least that’s what we thought.

This is a picture of the crew overlooking the meadow from the mountainside:

This is a picture of the Watering Hole and meadow that we had all scoped out.

This was the perfect meadow. It had a watering hole in the middle of it, and a perch on the mountainside right next to it so that we could peep the thirsty monster-bucks the morning of the opening of the hunt. Before leaving our sniping post, we decided that we would return the following morning at 3:00 AM so that we could take our trophy by surprise.

Yawwwnnnn. We wake up, I eat a granola bar, some jerky, and we jet to the mountain! Yippee! After the bouncy, vomit-inducing drive up the mountain, we parked and prepared to hike to our perch. The preparation involved me eating another granola bar, and firing up my hardcore $3.00 flash light from the local ALCO (wtf is ALCO anyways?).

The sky was beautiful cool (because manly, deer-huntin’, blood-thirsty men don’t say beautiful, right?). There were tons of stars and they were crazy bright. I figured my chances of seeing a UFO were far greater than ever seeing a buck to shoot at. (pessimism rocks!) We hiked the mountain, got in position, froze our junk off, and waited. And waited some more. Then some more. Finally the sun came up, and we figured this would be prime time for a bite! At least that’s how it is in fishing, right?

About an hour after the sun came out, we had our ByNocks (cool way to say binoculars) focused on the meadow, and the watering hole that would be sure to bring the monster bucks from miles and miles away to sip from it’s glorious elixir of life. A few hours passed, and we wondered why no deer were coming. Had they drank their fill the night before? Was the water source contaminated? Had the squirrels and chipmunks alerted their larger counterparts of the impending danger that wait for them on the adjacent mountain?

Then it hit us. What we thought was the damned watering hole was, in fact, a 8’x5’ patch of dry mud! That explained a few things. Probably 10 or more hours later, we decided that we had been played! Bucks are far too sophisticated to be outsmarted by a bunch of humans. We were beat. We figured that the fetchers pawed up the ground to look like a watering hole, and waited – pointing fingers and laughing at us – in the nearby woods. Whatever.

So basically we waited up on the mountain overlooking the meadow all morning, and ended up leaving empty handed. Then that night on a completely different mountain, the story above happened. Go figure.

My Arsenal of Affiliate Tools (Arsenal 1)

2009-10-18T09:35:00-07:00

Aloha!

Listed below are a few items out of my arsenal of tools that I use in my online career as an affiliate marketer. As my arsenal grows, I will create more posts to keep you updated.

Each item listed below is a tool that I use on a daily basis, and a tool that will help you make more money online. If you’re any type of affiliate marketer, you will be familiar with (or get familiar with) the items below and use them to your advantage.

- AWeber Email List Building ($19/month. Sign Up.)

For me, this tool has yet to pay for itself, but I see the payoff coming. I’m building email lists both on this site, as well as many others, and it won’t be too long before the $20 bones a month ends up paying for itself in the click of a (send) button. If you’re broke, like I was and still sort of am (curse you big corporations and your 5-star legal counsel!) then feel free to sign up for the free trial run of the software. I probably did two free trials of AWeber, and then canceled prior to the renewal date before I felt like I could really afford the service. If you can’t afford it, well, I understand. But don’t be hatin’ on it, just cause it’s $20 a month. The service is worth it.

- Thesis Wordpress Theme (Dev. Edition $190. Get It Now.)

Thesis has been an invaluable theme in my Arsenal of affiliate tools. Let’s face it. Most new affiliates (probably you) start websites with Wordpress blogs. And they launch lots of them. I used to do this, and still do start new blogs every once in a while. Wordpress is the easiest CMS (content management system) in the world, it’s free, and it’s instantly deployable. Once you have installed Wordpress though, you need to find a theme that doesn’t look ridiculous. This used to be a pain for me. I would spend hours upon hours of browsing “FREE Wordpress Theme” websites, only to download them, install them, and be let down by underperforming, dirty-coded themes. Sound like you? Buy the Developer version of Thesis, and use it for all of your future blogs. It may seem basic, or boring in the beginning, but it’s easily customizable, and the search engines eat it up!

- Keyword Elite ($190. Get It Now.)

I won’t try to sell you on this tool, and don’t buy it if you can’t afford it, but I’ve found it to be pretty interesting and valuable. I could definitely see it paying off if I did more Search Engine Marketing with Adwords. Keyword Elite costs like $180 bucks (yeah, it’s pricy), but it’s a good tool to generate some ideas and do research on keywords, adwords, etc. Visit the sales page and check it out. Just don’t buy it if you can’t afford it.

- Google Analytics (100% Free. Start Using It.)

If you own a website, you need Google Analytics. Let me reemphasize the “need” part. Google Analytics will provide you with the most vital statistics and information that will help you optimize your site for maximum traffic. Find out who’s going to your site, what browser they’re using, how long they stay, what pages they access, and much more. Again, Google Analytics are 100% free, and they can be installed simply by uploading a file to your server to verify that you own the site. Priceless tool, all for free. Get Google Analytics.

- Google Webmaster Tools (100% Free. Start Using It.)

For more information on Google Webmaster tools, you can read a post I made earlier about the power of this free information source. Quickly, though, GWTools let you see what terms your site is ranking for, the clickthrough rate of your organic rankings, and tons more like monitoring your unreachable URL’s and unfound URL’s. This is another tool that you need to use if you want to make money from your website. Monitor your vitals with Google Webmaster Tools.

- Wordpress (100% Free. Start Using It.)

Wordpress is the easiest, most flexible, helpful, free, CMS (content management system) in the world. Everybody from noobs, to the pro’s use Wordpress to publish content online. Wordpress can be used as a blog, or as a website to promote your niche product. Learn more about Wordpress, and download it for free here.

- Max Blog Press Ninja Affiliate Link ($90. Get It Now)

Turn your ugly, long, jacked-up affiliate links into smooth, sexy, eye-friendly click-candy with MBP Ninja Affiliate Link maker. This tool is for Wordpress blogs only. If you don’t understand what the tool does, it lets you turn ugly links like this: http://www.blabla.com/affid:2345blabla/asdfiewla/234881864yourbankmakingoffer.php to this: http://www.blabla.com/yourbankmakingoffer. This increases conversions, makes it so people can’t steal your affiliate commission by swapping out their information, and makes your site a lot prettier to the search engines. Get MBP Ninja Affiliate Link Here. The Tool Costs like $90 bucks, but it’s worth it. I wrote a more extensive post about MBP Ninja Affiliate Link here.

- A Big White Board To Hang On Your Wall (6 X 4 Feet or so)

Yeah, that’s right. Get a white board mounted on your bedroom wall, and start writing down your notes, goals, and whatever else you feel like writing. The nieces and nephews will dig it (and annoy the heck out of you in the process), but it’s all good. The $200 you may spend on the board will pay for itself after you start writing down and acting on the amazing ideas that it lets you write on it. These bad boys are pretty hard to find, and super expensive to ship if you buy them online, but I found that mom and pop office supply stores tend to have them for decent deals.

- Google Alerts (100% Free. Start Using It.)

Have you ever wanted to be emailed any time somebody said anything about you? Say for instance, your name is “Jeremy Blake” and you want to be alerted any time the Google Bots run across the term “Jeremy Blake”. Well, you would simply go to alerts.google.com and fill out the form. Use your imagination to realize all of the things that this could help you out with. Start Using Google Alerts!

- Crazy Egg (Free Trial Version. Try It Out.)

Crazy Egg is an awesome analytical heat mapping tool. If you want detailed information on where your users are clicking on your website, and where they are coming from, then you may want to give Crazy Egg a Go. They have a free version that you can try out.

Let me know your thoughts on these tools. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Have a tool that I should add to my arsenal? Let me know!

Get Discouraged. Just Quit. I Dare You.

2009-10-11T23:27:39-07:00

You’re probably at a time in your online career where you have created a site, generated some content, done a massive amount of link building – or so it feels like – and nothing has come of all your hard work. Heck, maybe you’re a PPC wizard (or trying to be) and you have spent tons of money with hardly any return. Sound like you? Keep reading, you lazy bastard!

credit: Anexo14

So what are you going to do? Quit! I dare you! Screw that. I’ll make it a triple dog dare! Making a thousand dollars in one day (consistently) is for someone else. You can’t make 1K a day unless you have some sweet title like CPA, MBA, PHD, or BAMF in front of your name, can you? Of course you can’t. That’s what everyone tells you. Who hasn’t seen the statistics flashed all over the evening news that say “People that get their associates degrees make $1,000,000 more, on average, in their life spans than someone who doesn’t graduate high school”? It’s talked about at church, and just about everywhere else. So why would you be able to make it without an education?

Well, ladies and gentlemen. I guess you can’t ever be too sure of yourself, but over the last few months, I’ve seen the awesome money making powers of affiliate marketing, and I’m convinced that I can make a career out of it. A very fruitful, lucrative one. Here’s to telling the world, and the educational system to shove it up their . . . whatever. You get the point.

Goal in life: Become a millionaire without the help of “Higher Education”.

After reaching millionaire status, I will then proceed to go back to school. For fun. To show everyone that it’s a waste of time – that is, if you count on school being the answer to all of your problems/questions in life.

I guess school is a great place to go if you plan on working for someone else – not to mention, for pennies in most casese – your whole life. Or if you have no idea what you want to do in life. Keep in mind: not knowing what you want to be when you grow up, and going to school to help you solve that problem, will most likely result in further confusion, and no money in the bank.

As for me: Forget that. I’ll take destiny into my own hands. Become a millionaire. Work for myself. Wake up when I want to. Drive the car I want to drive. Vacation whenever I want to. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. What about you?